Posted on 01/19/2018 9:11:42 AM PST by Red Badger
IBADAN, Nigeria — Allegedly abandoned by their American mother in Africa, seven children from Texas begged small change to buy food and shuttled from a neglectful stranger’s care to a concrete-block orphanage, Nigerians said Thursday.
Eventually, the children proved their American citizenship to a passing missionary from Texas by singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” He notified U.S. authorities, who got the youngsters home last week as Texas welfare officials investigated the mother.
Ages 8 to 16, the three boys and four girls, all of whom had been adopted by the woman, apparently spent 10 months in this market city of millions bustling with traders and crippled and leprous beggars.
A Nigerian welfare official said local authorities first learned about the children only a few weeks ago, and immediately took them into custody and turned them over to the government orphanage.
By then, they were skinny, mosquito-bitten and suffering from malnutrition, malaria and typhoid, officials and other people said.
“Three of them were sick. They could not walk,” said a 23-year-old who gave his name as Alex and is a former ward of the orphanage now living there as a student. “They looked tired. They’d been sick for long, without food.”
Life among criminals The young Americans found themselves living not only with other orphans, but juvenile criminals, including young thieves and rapists.
Officials at the orphanage declined to comment and would not let an Associated Press reporter talk with any of the orphans Thursday, but children in dirty and ripped clothes could be seen doing chores.
One 13-year-old girl washed dishes in an aluminum pail while younger children put the dishes away. Other children carried buckets of cassava on their heads, a starchy root that is the children’s principal food along with rice and beans.
U.S. authorities believe the seven American children arrived in Nigeria last October with their mother, whose fiance has a relative here. The mother, Mercury Liggins, 47, left within weeks. She later took a job as a food-service worker in U.S. military mess halls in Iraq, but quit in July, U.S. officials said. She is believed to be back in Houston, but couldn’t be located for comment.
A businessman's care Government workers and others who knew the children said she left them in the care of a businessman, Obiora Nwankwo, who has a well-tended, two-story house in an affluent neighborhood of Ibadan. The nature of the relationship between Liggins and Nwankwo wasn’t known. Nwankwo couldn’t be found when an AP reporter visited the home.
Nwankwo drove up to the gates of an Ibadan Montessori School on Oct. 16, school officials said. He enrolled the children in classes with what officials here said was benefit money from the children’s mother.
“He claimed he was their guardian,” principal Johnson Akintayo said. “They were put up in the boarding school.”
Their new school was clean, fronted by a row of tall palm trees, and the children seemed happy at first.
Changes after Christmas But when the children returned from Nwankwo’s home after Christmas break, they appeared underfed and neglected, said Victoria Mustafa, matron of the girls’ boarding quarters. “They were very pale and had lost weight,” she said.
The children began begging classmates and staff for money, using it to buy food.
The matron also remembered Brandy, the eldest at 16, talking longingly about America, her Houston high school, and home. “Brandy would talk about the school where she was, how she loved it.”
Then Nwankwo began missing payments to the school, and he complained that staff were being too nosey about the children, Akintayo said.
“The man grew suspicious when he claimed that some members of staff were embarrassing the children by asking certain questions,” the principal said.
By July 22, all seven children had stopped attending.
Six days later, Ibadan’s Association of Women Lawyers alerted local immigration authorities about the children, a social welfare official said, and Nwankwo’s home was raided the same day.
The seven were all malnourished. “Some of them were sick, critically ill,” with typhoid and malaria, said the official, who agreed to talk about the case only on condition of anonymity.
Four were sick enough to be hospitalized, but eventually joined their siblings at the orphanage, the official said. It wasn’t revealed which children went to the hospital.
Diplomatically sensitive Nigerian officials did not notify the U.S. Embassy, the official added, saying that was because the case was a sensitive matter diplomatically.
LaQuinta Teague, birth mother of three of the American children found by a missionary recently in a Nigerian orphanage, is shown Tuesday at her home in Dallas. The Texas Child Protective Services took her children while she was in a state prison and put them up for adoption. Teague only heard news about her children on Tuesday from the media. Then Nwankwo began missing payments to the school, and he complained that staff were being too nosey about the children, Akintayo said.
“The man grew suspicious when he claimed that some members of staff were embarrassing the children by asking certain questions,” the principal said.
By July 22, all seven children had stopped attending.
Six days later, Ibadan’s Association of Women Lawyers alerted local immigration authorities about the children, a social welfare official said, and Nwankwo’s home was raided the same day.
The seven were all malnourished. “Some of them were sick, critically ill,” with typhoid and malaria, said the official, who agreed to talk about the case only on condition of anonymity.
This guy should have though of that...
That was depressing. But predictable.
Border Control: do you have a US passport or birth certificate?
Children: no, but we can sing the Star Spangled Banner!
Border Control: Alrighty then...welcome to America!
The felon probably was getting some sort of welfare. She’s a loser.
Meanwhile illegal alien “children” in America are fat and sassy...
bump
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